From the archive: 23 April 1934

Sir Oswald Mosley's campaign

Do people go to see Oswald Mosley because they hope to see some fisticuffs or because they really think there is something in his policy? Whatever the cause he almost filled the Albert Hall to-night at prices ranging from a shilling to two guineas and got an excellent hearing. The applause came by no means only from the hundreds of Blackshirts dotted singly or in groups about the hall. There was no intimidation, but there were no scoffers.

Long before seven, the advertised time, the approaches to the Albert Hall were crowded with a dense though orderly mob of people, and inside the building troops of Blackshirts were clattering along the passages to their appointed positions. One of them sat as a steward at the end of every row.

When the doors were opened at 7.15 a Blackshirt orchestra began to play Fascist songs and copies of the words were sold to the uninitiated. Fascism has still to borrow some of its tunes from the older dictatorships. Two of them were "Giovinezza" and the "Horst Wessel" song. Copies of the "Fascist Week," with a front-page article by Mr J Beckett, the ex-I.L.P. Recruit, were sold in the audience, and news bills of the "Fascist Week" and the "Daily Mail" adorned the edges of the balconies.

Just before eight the spotlights were turned on to the long gangway leading through the arena to the platform, and a procession of twelve standard-bearers marched in carrying alternately Union Jacks and Fascist banners, black with a badge of fasces. The standard-bearers grouped themselves round the organ, the spotlights swung back to the main entrance, and there stood the Man of Destiny, the man whom his paper refers to in reverential capitals as "The Leader". Slowly he paces across the hall, chest out, handsome head flung back, while his followers, every man on his feet, cheered and waved and cried, "Hurrah! Hail Mosley! Mosley, Mosley."

There was fairly steady applause throughout Sir Oswald's speech, and three times it became almost rapturous. The first was when he said that Fascism had grown faster in Britain than anywhere else in the world. The second was when he stated that Fascism would give a man a job of government and full power to get on with it, but would dismiss him if he failed. The third was when he said that Jews would be expected to put Britain before Jewry. This reference to the Jews suggested a closer relationship to Continental Fascism than Sir Oswald publicly admits.

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